PubCrawl Podcast: Publishing 201 Sales Conference

This week JJ and Kelly talk sales conference and deliver some publishing real-ness. Also, yet more other podcast recommendations.

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Show Notes

In addition to editorial, production, marketing, and publicity, publishing houses also have a sales force.

The sales force comprises of people who have accounts with various bookstores throughout the country, e.g. Barnes & Noble, indie bookstores, mystery bookstores, etc.

The responsibility of the sales force is the sell titles to these various accounts

When people in publishing refer to the “book buyer”, they are not talk about the consumer; they are the people at bookstores who choose what books to carry in their inventory

Presentations at sales conference involve someone presenting the list of titles for a given season to the sales team including: title, synopsis, price, cover, blurbs, etc.

Lead Title

As much as we would love to believe this to be true, not all the publisher’s resources are distributed equally across their lists

Every season, there are books designated as “lead titles”—the reasoning for the designation can be somewhat arbitrary, but can include books for which the publisher has paid a large advance, books that have inherently very commercial or sexy concepts, a book that is timely in some fashion, and for a myriad of other reasons

Lead titles receive the bulk of the advertising and marketing budgets, and often have their own dedicated teams in-house. Publicity and marketing can also be complemented and outsourced by the publisher to independent third-party companies who act as consultants.